Team Leaders:

• Jeannie Dalporto, University of Charleston
• Tamara Kendig, West Virginia Wesleyan College
• Kathy Sohn, Pikeville College

Writing centers have become a critical part of writing across the curriculum programs at many colleges.  Each of the schools participating in this grant has integrated writing across the curriculum in a different way; thus we each needed to create a writing center that would support our own writing program.  Nonetheless, by combining resources, each school was able to get a full service writing center up and running in a remarkably short time.  The grant enabled us to work together in certain areas, such as tutor training and professional development, and work independently in other areas, such as acquiring reference materials and developing relationships with faculty and students.  The retreat was critical to our success. Many of the preliminary arrangements for the joint tutor training were made in a group setting, which helped us establish strong rapport and trust as we embarked on this joint project together.  Lodging, food, an agenda, and financial details were all arranged during this brief trip.  Brainstorming, planning and delegating were highly successful activities that yielded a clear plan of action as we each returned to our individual institutions.  Working together was crucial to our success; we were able to brainstorm and plan together, and offer each other feedback on individual projects.  At this point, we are all proud of the unique writing centers we have developed at each school, but we continue to rely on each other for ideas, information, and support.

Goals Met

1. To help students and faculty to understand that good writing is essential to success in any discipline.

All three colleges have been working to achieve this goal.  The grant has enabled us to gain professional expertise and ingenuity to promote our services on campus and heighten awareness of services.  The Pikeville College Writing Center has hosted two faculty development workshops in Fall 2000  (Integrating Writing Into Your Classroom) and Spring 2001 (Combating Plagiarism using Felicia Mitchell of Emory & Henry Writing Center's PowerPoint presentation).  Because of the SACS study, the meetings of the Writing Across the Curriculum Committee have been temporarily discontinued. 

Several workshops for faculty at the University of Charleston have been held including ones on holistic scoring and integrating writing to learn activities in course syllabi in the Initial College Experience (ICE) communities as well as classes across the disciplines.  In addition, the Communication Resource Center (CRC) director has been working closely with faculty promoting the use of the Center and for the first time in two years, visits to the Center have almost tripled. Faculty are promoting the CRC as a place where students can receive assistance beyond the basic problems of grammar, punctuation, etc.  And students have been responding to their instructors’ advice to seek help.

At West Virginia Wesleyan, the message has been spread through publicity efforts, including a kick-off "Battle of Hastings Day" presentation that shared the important facts about how the English language was "invented".  This event raised awareness of the Writing Center and its contributions on campus in a fun and interactive way. The Center staff also continued to make brief presentations on their services and to distribute publicity bookmarks.  Ads in the student newspaper and on the campus radio station supported these initial efforts.  Through word of mouth and several publicity campaigns, Wesleyan has increased its usage significantly in the 2000-2001 academic year, celebrating the 1000th consultation.  This is remarkable success considering that the Center has not yet been open four semesters.  WV Wesleyan also offered a faculty development workshop on designing effective writing assignments.

2. To provide the most effective guidance and feedback-as currently suggested by leaders in Writing Center research-to students in all disciplines who wish to take more responsibility for  their writing.

Travel to the National Writing Center Association Conference was deemed an important step in expanding our familiarity with writing center theory, practice and administration.  Susan Gebhardt-Burns and Tamara Kendig traveled to Baltimore, MD, to attend the conference.  They were able to network extensively with other writing center directors.  More importantly, they gathered some new ideas to use in the Writing Center at WV Wesleyan.  So far, they have expanded publicity efforts.  They also received some valuable advice on working with faculty members from various schools and attended informative sessions on ESL tutoring and tutoring students with learning differences, which they have shared with tutors. 

We at WV Wesleyan College have learned much from visiting and talking with WC staff at other schools.  Several of our publicity efforts are the result of conversations we had with tutors from Coe College in Ohio.  Berea College’s Communication Center inspired us to develop our library and to re-envision the physical space of the WC.  We also met with some of the staff from Bucks County Community College, whose dynamic tutoring center has increased its usage dramatically by offering coffee and other perks to faculty and students.

To learn about other writing centers which was part of the grant, the Writing Center Director at Pikeville College visited the Writing Center at Emory and Henry College.  The visit motivated the director to see an alternative way to opening the center to reach more students.  Being open 4:00-8:00 p.m. allows a classroom to be used during the day and be open for writing center activities when students are finished with their classes.  In fall 2001, the Pikeville Center will be open during those hours, with an on-call tutor for students who cannot attend during those hours. This replaces the system of appointments only which was the way the center had to operate while they were housed in the Tutoring Lab. 

In addition to the National Writing Center Association Conference, Pikeville College's coordinator was able to attend the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC).  There she made a presentation about our joint peer tutor training to the Writing Center Preconference Workshop on March 13, 2001.  In addition to feedback from participants about our program, she learned a lot about writing centers and is presently working with some attendees on another presentation for next year's workshop on the topic of ESL.

At UC, we have been able to use information from other writing centers to help us in terms of organization and materials. The online tutor-training manual housed at Montreat College, for example, helped us to organize our peer tutor training session and gave us ideas throughout the year for ongoing tutor training. In addition, visits to writing centers such as Berea and Lees-McRae have contributed to our vision of the CRC.

3.   To offer a welcoming and comfortable environment that will attract all student writers to come for help on a regular basis.

Through the grant, all three schools have been able to enhance the attractiveness of the writing environment.

Still housed in the college's overcrowded tutoring lab, the Pikeville College Writing Center provided as comfortable an atmosphere as possible considering the conditions.  Because of the lack of workspace, we offered tutoring by appointment only, which was inefficient for students and time-consuming from an administrative perspective. This arrangement will change next year, and we should have our own facility, which will improve upon the present situation.
 
The University of Charleston, in the past two years, and particularly with the assistance provided by this grant, has been able to create a comfortable and welcoming environment to clients. The CRC has furniture and other equipment that makes the Center more relaxed and comfortable. We have purchased a clock, a dictionary and stand, and a rotating pamphlet stand to help make our center more professional and inviting.  Furthermore, the CRC is located in a large, bright and sunny rooms decorated with plants and artwork.  It houses six computers and several round tables with chairs.  It offers clients coffee and light snacks during consultations.  As a result, students often remain and work on their assignments beyond their regularly scheduled appointment time. 

Similarly, WV Wesleyan's Writing Center has a large round conference table, a smaller consultation table, and two more private consultation tables against one wall.  We also have a waiting area ("Oscar the Couch"), a small refrigerator ("Cokes for a Quarter") and a popular candy jar.  This year we added additional seating and, through our tutor-training program, we created a bulletin board that the tutors are responsible for maintaining.  The bulletin board offers information, advice and encouragement to writers who come to the Center.  In addition, tutors have come to feel an increased ownership of the Center, and often bring in their own quotes and pictures for the walls.  They take care of the plants, maintain the coffee station, and update the events calendar, all contributing to a lively and welcoming atmosphere in the center. 

4.    To provide a facility where students can work on their writing while still in the center, so that hey may seek feedback or information at any time in their writing process.

Thanks in part to our collaborative tutor training, the tutors at all three schools are better able to foster independence in student writers by encouraging them to work on their writing in the center, asking questions or utilizing reference and resource materials as needed.

Pikeville College has dedicated a new space for the Writing Center, which we will move into in 2002.  In addition, we have secured enough funding through an additional grant to furnish the new space with computers for students who want to work on their writing in the center.  The new space will also have traditional conference spaces for consultation with tutors.

The University of Charleston has several tables where students and peer tutors work, as well as a row of six computers in the back of the CRC, so that students can go back and forth between drafting, consulting, and brainstorming. The clients therefore find it most convenient to stay and work in the Center with the consultants close at hand. 

Wesleyan offers comfortable workspaces for students who want to work on their writing either with our help or independently.  Our arrangement lets students bring their laptops and connect to the network, including the network printer housed in the Center.  These stations are located along the wall, which helps writers focus on their work.  The consultation areas are in the center of the room, providing a sense of community and collaboration.

5.  To  make  available handbooks and readers,  reference  books,  and  software  that  will help tudents across the disciplines improve  their writing skills.

Pikeville College Writing Center has obtained several reference works, including peer-tutoring handbooks for each of its tutors.  In addition, we have ordered English dictionaries for our North American students and Spanish/English and French/English dictionaries for our ESL students. Also for ESL, we have ordered a book about idioms.  We plan to order style guides for APA, MLA and other associations.  We also have on our shelves books on writing in the disciplines which we hope to make available to both students and faculty.  We are looking into software to supplement our other programs.

The University of Charleston CRC was already in possession of several handbooks and reference material; the grant allowed us to purchase several additional resource books that emphasize writing in the disciplines.  However, that has not been the case with software.  Although the CRC is in possession of six computers, they are unable to handle additional software installations.  Nonetheless, the CRC director has taken steps to rectify that situation.  Currently, half of the Center’s computers are being rebuilt with funds from the 2000-2001 CRC budget.  When the rebuilding process is complete the Center’s computers will be capable of handling additional software installation. 

Similarly, the Wesleyan Writing Center has obtained several reference works, including peer-tutoring handbooks for each of its tutors and style guides for APA, MLA and other associations.  We have also ordered a series of books on writing in the disciplines, which we hope to make available to both students and faculty.  These books have been popular resources for those using the Center.  We have no computers in the Writing Center, and we have not yet located software that will meet the needs of our laptop program.

6.  To demonstrate and encourage the idea of writing as a process by assisting students at all  stages of  writing  projects  and  in  all disciplines.

Peer tutors are critical to the success of our Writing Centers.  We needed to help our tutors learn from the beginning the importance of the process model in writing instruction and the most effective ways to assist student writers with different needs on a wide variety of assignments.  Kathy Sohn (Pikeville), Jeannie Dalporto (University of Charleston), Sati Maharaj (University of Charleston and ACA), and Tamara Kendig (WV Wesleyan) met during summer 2000 to plan the joint tutor training. In addition to meeting face-to-face and discussing issues by phone, each of us worked independently at our home institutions to interview and recruit tutors, to plan faculty development workshops, and to outline the organization of our Writing Centers.  The grant has resulted in a model for tutor training that can be used by other schools.  In addition to Kathy Sohn presenting our results at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Denver in March, 2001, we also presented our model for joint tutor training at the ACA Technology Summit in October, 2000.

The collaborative overnight tutor training retreat in Charleston was a huge success.  It enabled the Pikeville tutors, all of whom were new, to learn from other tutors, especially the ones from West Virginia Wesleyan who had been tutoring for one year.  The experience gave our tutors confidence in returning to the lab to do their work.  Sharing the experience with students from other schools helped them to see how important tutoring is, how common tutoring problems are, and how professional the tutoring job is. Whether we continue joint peer tutor training or not, we will continue to train our tutors to serve the students and faculty of our institution.

The joint peer tutor training session was a tremendous success for University of Charleston as well. All trainees, both experienced and new, benefited from the training and enjoyed giving and receiving advice. At UC the tutors were more confident as they began the year, knowing that they had a support team.  In the spring, UC hired additional tutors.  The tutors who had been trained in the fall were then able to assist in the training of the new tutors at a special January training session.  In a sense, the joint tutor training in the fall planted the seeds to continue collaborative tutor training on an ongoing basis.

All of the Wesleyan tutors benefited from the opportunity to discuss their work with tutors from the other grant institutions.  Even those who had tutoring experience benefited from this professional-level training.  In sharing their experiences and advising new tutors, our returning tutors were able to think critically about their practices and philosophies on tutoring during the retreat.  Their new self-awareness has improved their performance in the Center. The trip improved solidarity and professionalism among the tutors, and energized their efforts in the Center.  We hope to continue the practice of joint training should we have enough funding in the future.  In addition, WV Wesleyan is now CRLA certified at Level I for tutor training.  All of our current tutors are certified.  We hope to continue the training program in future years so that future tutors will be certified as well.

7. To recruit faculty from a variety of disciplines to form a core of support for WAC and the writing center. 

The grant has helped reinforce the support for Writing Across the Curriculum on each campus by creating a central location, both physical and psychological, for writing.  The Centers house both expertise and resources for incorporating WAC. 

Pikeville has a WAC committee that generally meets once a month to discuss WAC issues on our campus. The Center director continues to "recruit" faculty through conversations over lunch.  We have made one classroom visit and hope to expand those visits next fall.

The UC faculty who are a part of the freshman learning communities help form an informal core of support for WAC by encouraging students to take advantage of the resources offered by the CRC. These faculty work directly with the staff and director of the CRC. The Communication Roundtable also serves as the WAC committee and has helped faculty from a variety of disciplines to integrate writing into their courses.

Wesleyan has no formal WAC program, but the Center director regularly visits department meetings to encourage discussions on writing in the disciplines.  In addition, the tutors, director and coordinator make many classroom visits each semester to promote our services.  Finally, the director was selected to serve on the college's General Education Steering Committee to serve as the writing "expert" during discussions on the core curriculum. 

Future Challenges

Though the Culpeper grant provided tremendous opportunities for the Writing Centers to be established where none existed, several challenges emerged.

At Pikeville College, tutor retention became a problem resulting from the lack of experience of new tutors once their academic program overwhelmed them, the lack of experience of the new director who had not supervised tutors before, and the intermittent schedule of tutors because they did not know when they would be assigned a tutee. The first year of the PC Writing Center has been slow because of tutor attrition and subsequent lack of service for students referred from faculty.  We have served about 75 students. 

UC also experienced high consultant turnover and as a result, could not keep the Center open for as many hours as desired.  Subsequently, establishing a real time chat session has been challenging.  As a result, it is difficult to get the consultants to interact with each other because they first need to establish a level of trust with their immediate group and then with their online peers. Getting them motivated to participate in the listserv and to even participate as a team has been a major challenge. Students are first and foremost students and perhaps the greatest difficulty has been to view themselves even as semi-professionals and for them to switch roles from participant to listener.  Also, it’s been difficult to get them to view their role of consultant as more than just a job. 

The listserv was disappointing for Wesleyan as well, although some tutors voiced an interest to engage more in on-line discussions with their new colleagues.  They do, however, interact well with each other on campus, and have approached their work with seriousness and dedication. Wesleyan continues to focus on tutor training and development, but we are also interested in getting a web site up and running.  Because so much of our campus life incorporates the laptops, it seems to us like a good way to reach more students.  We will continue to work on this project next year.
 
One way we dealt with these challenges is through monthly conference calls among the three institutions.  Building on the foundation of our new successes, we shared our difficulties and provided suggestions for each other.  We hope to continue doing that for the next year.  In terms of turnover at Pikeville College, a new, more central location with regular hours and the hiring of tutors to cover those hours should alleviate the problem.  Experience, too, will contribute to smoother administration of the Center. 

Because of the huge success, the three colleges intend to conduct another joint consultant training in fall 2001 using institutional funds to achieve that purpose.  All directors will continue to support writing across the curriculum efforts, especially in terms of faculty development.